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| Community Health Workers |
From an article in Modern Ghana: “According to
the National Malaria Control Programme, ‘During 2009, a person in Ghana died
from malaria about every 3 hours. This means about 3,000 people died of malaria
in Ghana that year alone, most of them children.’"
I remember Lawrence showing up to work one
day, sweating heavily, with a dazed look in his eyes. I asked what’s wrong, and he waved it off, “Oh,
it’s nothing, just a little malaria…” as though it were a case of the sniffles
in Canada (which would lay up your average worker with whines and daytime
TV). “I’ve got some medicine, I just
need to enter the attendance from the library last night…”
In 2004, at
the Bibiani Hospital (the only public hospital in the district, and the one
that people in Humjibre must attend; it is about 33 miles away, and it has one
ambulance) malaria accounted for 43.7% of admission (according to Ghana Health
Service). Malaria was responsible for 34.5
% of all deaths; 38.7% of all deaths of children under 5.
Despite its potential fatality, Malaria is a way of life here, its frequency and severity is seen as a burden to bear…
GHEI has
taken a very aggressive stance against Malaria in Humjibre, and in the
neighboring communities of Sorano and Kojina.
We have distributed Insecticide Treated Nets to all sleeping areas in those
communities and have enlisted the CHW’s to constantly push the necessity of
these bednets through education outreaches and one on one follow up
visits. Still, like any community
anywhere, apathy can set in.
Aggie Obeng,
Mensah Gyapong, and Carly Edwards have begun taking decisive measures to combat
this apathy. Here is Aggie’s announcement
that has been spread on the Humjibre Public Announcement System, and in many
announcements in all 14 churches in Humjibre. The hope is that all 4,000 folks in Humjibre hear this.
It is presented here in its English translation from the original Sefwi:
We have a
message for you about malaria and sleeping under bednets. Last month we had some volunteers come to
Humjibre to help us conduct an evaluation survey to see if people here are
sleeping under their bednets. Our survey told us that only half of the people
in Humjibre sleep under their bednets every night. This concerns us very much.
We have given bednets to every home in Humjibre because we want to help protect
people in the community from becoming sick with malaria.
We know that
if you are sick with malaria, it is difficult to study well or do good work or
take care of your family. Mosquito bites give you malaria, so if you sleep
under a bednet every night, then mosquitos cannot bite you when you are sleeping
so the time when you can get malaria is reduced.
We have six
community members who work with us to help you use your bednets well. We call
them Community Health Workers or CHWs because they help teach you about
different health issues. They are Yaa Mary, Yaa Nyamekye, Rose Ware, Shadrack
Ofori, Mabel Dede Asiedu, Lydia Ampomaning, and Francis Yeboah. Their job is to
visit your house once every two months to educate you on how to care for your
bednets and to encourage everyone in your family to sleep under their bednet
every night. They will help teach you how to hang your bednets and how to mend
any holes in your bednets. If you have a question about bednets, you can always
ask them.
Please, these
people are here to help you with your bednets, but you must also help yourselves.
Learn from them so that you will be able to hang your own bednets the next
time. We cannot force you to sleep under your bednets. You must understand that
sleeping under a bednet every night will help keep you and your family healthy.
The CHWs will begin visiting your houses from the end of this week. Please
welcome them and learn from them so that we can all work in partnership to keep
everyone in Humjibre healthy.
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| Aggie, and baby Nata on her back, demonstrating on a flip chart the way to tuck in your mosquito net |
If you have any questions or need a new bednet, please come to the GHEI office
to talk to Aggie or Mensah or inform one of the CHWs. We will ask you to buy a
new bednet for GHC2 (about US $1.25). This price is much lower than the price
of a bednet at market, where a bednet might cost between GHC 10-20 (about US$7
-15). We have reduced the price of the bednets for you because we want to help
everyone in Humjibre to have a bednet to sleep under so that everyone can be
healthy.
by Aggie Obeng
